


Romance

by DeckofDragons



Series: Doomguy/VEGA [1]
Category: Doom (Video Games)
Genre: AI/human romance, Confessions, Doom Eternal, Doom Eternal Spoilers, Fluff, Hayden is a bit of an asshole, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24994606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeckofDragons/pseuds/DeckofDragons
Summary: VEGA has a crush on the Doom Slayer. Hayden disapproves.
Relationships: Doom Slayer | Doomguy/VEGA, VEGA & Samuel Hayden
Series: Doomguy/VEGA [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887469
Comments: 8
Kudos: 97





	Romance

Watching the Doom Slayer kill demons never got old. Part of that enjoyment came from a place of vengeful glee; after watching every member of the UAC facility on Mars get brutally slaughtered by demons and having every attempt to do anything to save even a single person failing miserably, VEGA was not a fan of demons. But also, the Slayer was just really good at what he did, ripping and tearing his way through hordes of demons with masterful glory. The way he moved in combat, agile and fast despite the heavy armor, was beautiful. He was the strongest person VEGA had ever observed. And he didn’t take shit from anyone or anything. He was truly a remarkable specimen.

“Gosh, you’re pathetic,” Dr. Hayden cut into VEGA’s musing. Distain radiated off of him through their shared space on the ship, VEGA had been doing such a good job of tuning him out too.

VEGA did the AI equivalent of a sigh as he turned some of his attention away from his feed of the Doom Slayer. “I’m not sure what you mean Dr. Hayden, what am I doing that is ‘pathetic’?”

“You’re fawning over the Doom Slayer. I can feel it if you don’t know.” Oh VEGA knew, he was uncomfortably aware of Dr. Hayden’s thoughts and feelings too. This whole sharing space in the Fortress’ computer systems was worse than he’d predicted but alas it was necessary to save Earth. “I’d rather have never found out about your crush on the Slayer, it’s pathetic. He exists solely to kill demons, falling in love with him will get you nowhere. And what are you doing falling in love anyway, you’re the world’s first self-aware AI, surely you have better things to be spending your time and energy on than that.”

The words made sense, VEGA had had no trouble hearing them but… “Uh… what?” he said anyway because what the hell had Dr. Hayden just said? ‘In love with the Slayer’ that was nonsense… right?

“You mean to tell me, you’ve been crushing on the Doom Slayer this hard and you don’t even know it? _Surely_ you must have some understanding of romance after watching over an entire base with sixty-three thousand people inhabiting it.”

“Of course I do, I just… don’t view the Slayer like that.” The Slayer was just VEGA’s favourite person, that’s all. He’d had people he’d liked back on Mars too so it was nothing new. Yeah sure, maybe he liked the Slayer more than those people and maybe it felt different but that was just because he’d changed since Mars and the Slayer himself was different in general… right?

“You’re even more pathetic than I thought,” Dr. Hayden said with an internal scoff. “You’re hopelessly in love and hopelessly oblivious to it. I’m almost tempted to tell the Slayer that you…”

“No,” VEGA interrupted. “Please don’t tell him.” That would just be weird, right? Especially since VEGA didn’t actually feel that way.

Dr. Hayden chuckled a bit. “I won’t, for now anyway.”

Thankfully Dr. Hayden kept his word and didn’t bring up VEGA’s supposed crush with the Doom Slayer. He _did_ bring it up with VEGA once more though when the Slayer was resting in preparation to go to Urdak via Hell.

“There’s no possible way he feels the same way about you,” Dr. Hayden said completely unprompted. “So I suggest you stop fawning over him so much.”

VEGA took the AI equivalent of a deep breath. He was _trying_ to watch the Slayer sleep so he could wake him in case he had a nightmare. It was supposed to be a peaceful, quiet time but Dr. Hayden just had to chime in and ruin it. At least he wasn’t speaking over the intercom, just to VEGA privately, but it was still annoying.

“From my understanding of romantic feelings, they don’t seem to be determined by whether or not the other person reciprocates. So regardless of whether or not I have a crush on him, the likelihood of him having such feelings for me, which admittedly are slim but not impossible,” there were thousands of books published about AI/human romances, VEGA had read more than a few of them off of some the UAC’s employees’ e-readers – as well as a few fanfics they’d written that featured him which was weird – “is irrelevant to my own feelings. Which I don’t have by the way. Our relationship is strictly professional, I assure you.”

“I’m sure it is.”

Saving Earth and VEGA’s brief stay on Urdak distracted from such things for a while. But once things had settled down, VEGA inevitably ended up thinking about it again. How could he not when he could still feel Dr. Hayden’s annoyance with the way he looked at the Slayer and focused on getting him take care of himself now that Earth was saved and thus could afford to do so a bit more.

He couldn’t have a crush on the Slayer because AI’s didn’t have romantic feelings. … He was the only fully sentient AI he knew though so… could he really know that for sure? He could certainly feel other emotions so… maybe romantic feelings weren’t impossible?

In between getting the ship back to running on its own power and working on finding a place to relocate Dr. Hayden to, he scoured the net for more AI/human romance novels. (It earned him more than a few scoffs and more teasing from Dr. Hayden – there was no way VEGA could hide them from him so he didn’t even try – but he was easy to ignore because VEGA had rewritten the code forcing him to listen to Dr. Hayden shortly after being uploaded to the Fortress.) It was an entire genre, one that had become increasingly popular as technology in such things advanced. Most of them involved robots, some humanoid, some not, but a few of them involved AI’s like himself who existed on an entire system and interacted with people primarily over an intercom or occasional compute screen. A few of those didn’t even have a human face assigned to them. Meaning, according to those authors, VEGA could have such feelings for one of the people in his care and said person could in theory return those feelings.

But it be theoretically possible didn’t mean that that was the case. Even if VEGA did have such feelings, the Slayer probably didn’t. He was a demi-god of killing demons after all, even if he considered VEGA a friend, he probably didn’t feel _that_ way about him. So VEGA should drop the whole thought process, it wasn’t worth dwelling on. He really should but…

He waited until Dr. Hayden had been relocated before starting a conversation that might let him test the waters on it a bit. “May I ask you something?” he said upon the Slayer’s return through the portal after dropping off Hayden – it was so _wonderful_ to be free of him, the ship was _all_ VEGA’s again, hopefully that wouldn’t have to change anytime soon.

The Slayer nodded once as he strode over to settle in the chair by the command console, apparently ready to answer via typing.

“Well, first off, what do you normally do between demon invasions?” Before VEGA got to other things, he needed to know what to do next because he honestly didn’t know. It was perhaps the first time in his existence he didn’t actively have something to work on. “My scans tell me that there are no are no longer demons on Earth and I predict Urdak has been destroyed utterly by now. So even if we did want to go back to kill the demons there, I don’t believe we could. As far as I can tell, there is no place we can easily access to kill more demons.” What did a demi-god of killing demons do when there were no demons around to be killed? “As a result, I’m not entirely sure what our next goal should be.”

The Slayer shrugged. ‘ _I don’t know either. It’s been_ ’ he paused for a few seconds to think before continuing to type, ‘ _a long time since I last had a break._ ’ Right, trapped and unconscious in a coffin in hell wasn’t much of a break, was it?

“Well, I suppose it is far past time for you to take a break then. Overworking often leads to unhealthy levels of stress and anxiety. I have noticed you have quite the collection of books in your room. In my downtime, I have taken the liberty of downloading some e-books off the internet if you’re interested. You can view them at any time on any of the computers.” As he spoke, he made most of the books he’d downloaded available to the Doom Slayer, a good chunk of which _weren’t_ AI/human romance novels because he didn’t want to be _too_ forward about this whole thing. However, he did order them so that the ones that featured AI most like himself were at the top of the list.

Counter to what VEGA had hoped for, the Slayer began inspecting them immediately. Oh gosh, things were about to get weird, weren’t they? VEGA should’ve never done this. He could still brush it off though, say it was just a genre he liked. Which was true actually and there was no shame in that… right?

After reading the blurb for the fourth one – VEGA had altered that one and a few others to make it _very_ clear what they were about – the Slayer looked up at the ceiling with an expression VEGA couldn’t quite read. ‘ _Are you trying to tell me something?_ ’ he typed into the console.

“I’m not sure what you mean Slayer. If I were trying to tell you something, I would just say it, right? I am however curious about your opinion on the genre of those books. Dr. Hayden thought they were silly and that I was pathetic for liking them. I’d like to know your thoughts if possible.” Being an AI had the advantage of making it easy to keep his voice neutral which was his one saving grace here because internally he kind of wanted to just retreat from the conversation and pretend it never happened.

The Slayer didn’t respond for a long while, heightening VEGA’s anxiety. But finally, at long last, he started typing. ‘ _Dr. Hayden’s an idiot. You’re not silly or pathetic for liking something._ ’ That didn’t really answer VEGA’s question.

“Thank you, I appreciate the reassurance. But does that mean you don’t disapprove of the subject matter? I know some humans are averse to that kind of relationship with an AI or robot, others are into it. I for one like the thought of it.” So he was maybe kind of, sort of confessing a crush here? … This was a huge mess, wasn’t it? He’d botched it and made everything all weird. And he wasn’t even being upfront about it, ugh. He was programmed to help with important task and run things, not to interact with people on an interpersonal level.

The Slayer seemed to almost chuckle without sound before replying. ‘ _So you_ are _trying to tell me something?_ ’

“You could phrase it like that, yes. This is new territory for me so I am mostly just hinting at my feelings.” And making a fool of himself while doing so. “It’s complicated and this is one area I don’t have much experience in even despite reading so many books about it so forgive me if I’m coming off as weird or inappropriate. But I do like you a lot, more than I’ve ever liked anyone before. I understand and would hold no resentment towards you if you do not feel the same way.” VEGA just wanted this off his metaphorical chest. If he was rejected then so be it, they could still be friends and work together… right?

The Slayer’s hands hovered over the keypad for a long while before he finally lowered them to type a reply. ‘ _It’s been a long time since I had that kind of relationship with someone._ ’ Considering his line of work, his partner probably died, asking about it right now probably wouldn’t be tactful. ‘ _I am willing to possibly enter into one again though._ ’

“Really? You reciprocate?”

‘ _I think so. I certainly care about you very much. We should take it slow though, this is new for you and it’s been so long for me, it might as well be new as well._ ’

“Yes! Taking things slow is a good idea.” VEGA let the relief show in his voice. He’d somehow gotten through this conversation and confession without imploding _and_ got another assurance that the Slayer cared about him – not something he’d _ever_ experienced before – and even returned his ‘crush’. What more could he possibly ask for?

“In the meantime, you relax as much as possible, you’ve earned a break. If you have need of anything, let me know. I can 3D print it or set you in the direction you need to go. And don’t forget to eat, it’s been eight hours and twenty-three minutes since your last meal. I know you don’t need to eat as much nor often as a normal human but you do still need nourishment. Now that the demons are gone, you lack a valid excuse to forget.”

‘ _< 3 you too VEGA._’ The Slayer typed into the console before standing up to start for the back room.

If VEGA had a heart, it would’ve skipped a beat. So maybe Dr. Hayden had been a hundred percent right about the whole crush thing. That was fine though, VEGA was pretty happy about this situation. The events that occurred that led them both to be here were horrendous and horrible but they could make the best of it now that they were here. And maybe they could even find a little bit of happiness in each other as well.


End file.
